Pipe Organ and Wire Harp A How-to for Your Church!
Almost every Sunday, unless husband George has to be away (substituting at another church, playing the carillon for Convocation or Commencement at either of his two colleges), he’s playing the historic pipe organ at our church. Preludes, postludes and hymns. With, of course, wire harp accompaniment! If you happen to have a spouse, friend […]
Frequently Breaking Harp Strings Restringing my harp...
At the moment my now-primary church harp is Esabelle, my cross-strung wire harp. Here she is: She’ll need to be my prelude/postlude/Communion/hymn accompaniment harp for the foreseeable future, because: 1. She’s lightweight 2. She can be quickly carried in a nice green weatherproof bag for those torrential rainy Vermont mornings (see #1) 3. In the […]
Irish Wire Harp at Communion Source of Melody...
My favorite time to play my harp during Sunday morning church service is at Communion. At our church, members are invited to come up and gather in a circle around the altar after our visiting priest (we don’t have a permanent rector) elevates the Host, breaks it and begins to distribute it to each in […]
My Paraguayan Harp Mi Arpa Paraguaya
Here is my Paraguayan harp. It actually belongs to my husband George Matthew Jr., who bought it at a church fundraiser some years ago when he was living in CT. I’ve done some research on it and discovered it was built by Adelio Ovelar of Asunción, Paraguay sometime in the early 1980’s. It was my […]
Sacred vs. Secular (and music that really doesn't work for me...)
Let me open this post by clearing the air (as it were), by noting first it’s been a while since my last post – April of this year to be exact. We’ve had some rough weather here in Vermont with the floods and the wildfire smoke and that hasn’t exactly been conducive to thoughtful writing. […]
Українські Великодні Піснеспіви Ukrainian Easter Hymns
Accompanying my recent collection of Polish Easter hymns, here’s a comparable set of Ukrainian hymns, 23 in total. I’ve loosely translated their titles and provided an index at the beginning. You can download this pdf collection and print them at the UPS Store and have them spiral bound, as I like to do, so they’ll […]
About my harps St. Thomas & Grace Weekly Digest
Welcome to those of you who came here after clicking the link in our Weekly Digest! This is a WordPress blog I’ve been maintaining on and off and I hope to continue writing occasional material for our weekly church newsletter with a link to here if there’s interest. I’ve enjoyed playing my harps for you […]
King David’s Psalms What he might have actually played...
In my continuing research for interesting liturgical music to play on my three Irish wire-strung harps in church, I recently came across the work of the late French archaeomusicologist and organist Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura (1912-2000). She is best known for her book La Musique de la Bible revélée (1st ed.: 1976), a study in which the cantillation […]
Polish Liturgical Music on Wire Harp Roman Catholic Hymn Collection
In recent months I’ve become aware of a fantastic collection of kolady (Christmas carols) and hymns and service music for Mass on the website of the Polish American Liturgical Center at Orchard, Lake Michigan. Under Śpiewnik (hymnal) you will find a fabulous collection of Polish language hymns in PDF format to download! As I am […]
Truitt levers on Argent Fox Double Wire Harp
My new Argent Fox double strung wire harp has a full set of Truitt sharping levers with delrin fret pins. Here are some photos of them on my harp! A nice, brief article introducing the concept of levers: Types of Harp Sharping Levers